Seven Havens Episodes 4-6 Recap and Review

Okay, that’s not exactly true; the thrust of Book 1: Survival (the overarching name for the season) certainly seems to be Pavi and Nisha regaining the lost memories of their past while the tensions and distrust in Ellora bubble over to unbearable levels, mostly focused on the unseen threat of the Avatar — after all, we’re told it was the previous Avatar, Korra, who broke the world two centuries ago, leading to what’s left of humanity living in Seven Havens.

The Long View

But the real tense question for viewers watching the show is: When are they going to leave this One (1) Haven and explore the other Six (6) Havens, to make Seven total Havens? Look, it’s gotta happen — probably — but this isn’t the single-city focus that mostly consumed Legend of Korra. There, it made sense to spend a lot of time in Republic City; the steampunk-inspired home for all four types of benders and humans was a vast array of landscapes and social strata. Ellora, by design, is smaller and more in line with where we first met Aang with the Southern Water Tribe before heading off to explore the wide world of Avatar.

In fact, if you look at a similar span of time on The Last Airbender, team Avatar had left the Southern Water Tribe by Episode 6, went to the Southern Air Temple, met the Kyoshi Warriors, headed to the Earth Kingdom of Omashu, and fought the at-the-time villainous Zuko multiple times. Not that Seven Havens needs to ape that formula, but the curiosity factor about the new landscape of the world after Korra’s cataclysm (Korraclysm?) is high. We end Episode 6, “Night of the Afflicted,” with Ellora calling the other Havens for help; however, that likely means the other Havens are coming to Ellora, not Pavi and Nisha going to them.

This would be much less of a problem if every episode didn’t include the twins talking about how they want to go find their parents and see if they’re alive. Yet not once does anyone say, “okay, let’s check outside Ellora,” which is the last place they were seen. Yes, Ellora and its citizens are getting plenty of time in the sun, and they’re all interesting in their own right. But at this point, it feels like Seven Havens is fighting against itself to keep our characters in town instead of following the quest structure the season seemed to be setting up.

Those five paragraphs aside, let’s not also forget that this is a very fun show and a great addition to the Avatar canon. While the season-long view raises some questions about the show’s direction, it’s still lovely to look at on an episode-by-episode basis, adorably funny, and doing a nice job of slowly fleshing out the expansive cast. And thanks to the news out of New York Comic Con that the show will now run at least four seasons, there’s a little bit more breathing room for Seven Havens to stay in Ellora before Pavi, Nisha, and presumably Jae (Major Curda) head out to repair this broken world. When they had just announced two seasons, you could hear the clock ticking away in the background; now, they can hang in Ellora for Season 1 but hopefully get on the road in Seasons 2-4.

The Episodes Close Up

Okay, enough long view. To break down the plot more specifically, Episode 4, “The Faceless,” focuses on what seemed to be the big threat last week. As it turns out, they’re really raiders taking grain and other goods from Ellora — late in the episode they kidnap a herd of cameldillos. The smart thing this half-hour does is take this threat and pair it with a very small, personal quest for our three leads to find missing Bending Brigade member Uki (Kimberly Woods). Not only does this allow Pavi to get much weirder, building on her “actually, I talk to rocks and they’re my friends” moment from Episode 3, but it gives us more of a chance to understand the increased fear and panic in Ellora that’s caused or amplified by what was left behind by the red diamond.

Not to compare and contrast two extremely different shows, but take a look at Lanterns over on HBO, which spent a lot of time telling us how nervous the people of the town of Rushville, Nebraska were, while only showing us those people one or two times in eight episodes. Meanwhile, Seven Havens depicts this on multiple levels, from those in the ruling class to citizens in a delicious looking bakery to Uki’s insanely large family, who are worried not just about her but the city itself. As viewers, this gives us a specific emotional tie versus Pavi and Nisha riding their cat-monkeys through a town of, er, faceless nobodies. This storyline is all about panic and fear of the unknown, something extremely relevant to our modern world. The almost-riot in Episode 5, “The One Left Behind,” and the pseudo-zombie attacks in Episode 6, “Night of the Afflicted,” wouldn’t be as effective if we didn’t care about the regular people of Ellora.

And now a quick side-trip to theory town (and scroll down for a very big theory that borders on possible spoilers): We’re all agreed that the Faceless aren’t bad guys; they’re people trying to survive outside the Haven, right? And given the “you should join us” moment at the beginning of the episode, by the time Jae finds Uki again, she’ll understand the Faceless point of view? Okay, cool.

To jump into Episode 5, now that city guard Molin (Osric Chau) is possessed by the red entity and knows (or thinks he knows) the Avatar is in town, tensions are unbearably high. What works nicely about the animation here is that the expressions convey the real pain and terror everyone is feeling as the Guards work to track down the Avatar. Meanwhile, Jae and Bending Brigade Commander Karthik (Akshay Khanna) try to alleviate fears despite knowing there isn’t just one but two Avatars in Ellora.

There’s a lot to like about this episode. Shouts to Seven Havens for doubling down on the relationship between Jae and Datu (Topher Ngo). There’s the funniest moment they’ve had so far, with an old woman responding to Jae’s impassioned pleas with a raspberry, then being haughtily carried away by a large man. And of course, Karthik has a secret closet full of artifacts, aka Avatar easter eggs, which we’ll get into more after the recap. But the biggest plus is again keeping things focused on emotion while spooling out the plot. Here, thanks to a rediscovered bracelet paired with Pavi’s brooch, we discover that Nisha and Pavi’s parents were trying to hide them and contacted the Order of the White Lotus, but when Karthik arrived, he only found Nisha alone in the wasteland. There are strong shades of Rey’s story from Star Wars: The Last Jedi here, though clearly our twin Avatars’ parents know a whole lot more about the world breaking than we’re aware of at the moment.

And then there’s Episode 6, which has Ellora getting its fears amplified by the crystalline structures left behind by the red diamond, with the evil diamond returning not to attack but to show Pavi and Nisha another vision of their mother and father. Perhaps most importantly, Pavi calms down Molin by sticking him in a “cozy wall,” which counts as number two after Raspberry Lady in the list of funniest moments in this batch of episodes. Not to sound like a broken record, but once again this episode pairs the fear zombie plot (the big story) with Pavi’s own fears that she won’t be good enough thanks to the loss of her leg (ostensibly the little story). There’s clearly more to tell there, but the animation conveys her pain and frustration as she tries to help Nisha and Jae quell the madness, and the ultimate delivery of a new prosthetic from an extremely kindly doctor is joyful, as Pavi bounces around the room.

Naturally, the mysteries here — Why are there two Avatars? What’s up with the red diamond? Is it really the wrath of the spirit world, or something else? What about those other six Havens? — are great to theorize about. But as with The Last Airbender and later seasons of The Legend of Korra (they made the mistake of going a little too plot- and exposition-heavy in the first season), the focus is on characters and emotion first.

This does tie neatly into The Big Theory we’ll get into below, and while there is a bit of the “when are they going to get to the fireworks factory” in regards to those other Six Havens in this week’s batch of episodes, Seven Havens is doing a bang-up job of making us care not just about Pavi and Nisha, but all of Ellora. There’s a kindness and empathy running through this series that is rare even for animated shows. In short? Avatar: Seven Havens is like sitting inside a nice, cozy wall for 60ish minutes every week.

Avatar Easter Eggs, References, And Connections

Before we get into specific easter eggs, here’s that theory we mentioned — and while it is just a fan theory posted on Reddit, it’s the sort of thing that feels so correct, it may have figured out the whole show after the first week. So possible future spoilers on: The Seven Havens are the Seven Chakras. That’s the short version, but if you don’t recall — back in The Last Airbender Season 2, Aang learned about the seven chakras that, when unlocked, allow him to enter the all-powerful Avatar State. He initially was unable to unlock them due to not letting go of attachments, and was later badly hurt due to Azula’s lightning bending.

Each chakra has a color and an associated emotion, and the colors of the Seven Havens all coincide exactly with the colors of the various chakras. Ellora, you may not be surprised to learn, is depicted as red in the opening credits, and the red chakra or Root Chakra, is blocked by fear. The title of the season finale of Seven Havens’ first season? “The Root Chakra.”

While not exactly “case closed,” the theory continues that Korra either did something or was trying to prevent something from happening (and failed) that broke the chakras of the world. So once Pavi and Nisha figure this out, they won’t be going on a journey to figure out bending à la Aang and Korra since they’ve already mastered all four elements, but rather to unlock the seven chakras of the world and restore balance. The weird weather? That’s because the chakras are blocked; it would also explain why the red diamond isn’t evil. It just needs Pavi and Nisha to do something to unblock Ellora’s fear.

One additional aspect of this theory, by the way, is that intrepid fans have already laid the map of the Seven Havens from the opening credits over the known map of the Avatar world. While some places are unknown or guesses, it seems almost a given that one of the Havens is Ba Sing Se, while the likely final one is none other than Republic City. Again, this makes a lot of sense; if this is indeed a journey to restore the chakras, the place where Korra probably made her last stand would definitely be her home from Legend of Korra.

Is this all true? Just wild guesses? We’ll find out as the show continues, but let’s get into some easter eggs and references we do know for sure.

To work backwards (because pretty much everything we need to talk about is in Episode 5), it’s neat to see lightning bending again, aka the coolest bending. We also get to see Pavi and Nisha do energy bending to “banish” the red diamond, which stuns Karthik. While the above Big Theory seems more plausible, this could throw a little more fire on the “Aang did something when he removed Fire Lord Ozai’s bending” theory, since that also involved energy bending.

Okay, fine, Episode 5. Right at the beginning, we get a fun little mention of “Commander Bountan once told me he saw a dancing lemur-man in the harshlands.” While there’s no way Bountan actually saw this, it’s clear this is a reference to Momo’s iconic dancing in The Last Airbender Season 2, “Tales of Ba Sing Se,” where he danced with some monkeys while trying to find the missing Appa.

…And then Pavi and Nisha end up in Karthik’s secret room, a treasure trove of artifacts collected by the Order of the White Lotus. Look, full disclosure: We’re definitely going to miss things here because there is so much, so sound off in the comments below if you catch something we don’t. But a partial list of artifacts includes:

• Sokka’s club, which Pavi uses as a backscratcher and pulls a classic Sokka face as she does
• It looks like they might also have Sokka’s sword on one of the higher shelves
• A fan from one of the Kyoshi Warriors
• The Avatar Relics, aka the toys used to identify Avatars. At the very least, there’s the hand drum, wooden hog monkey, and pull-string propeller used with Aang seen in the foreground as Nisha enters the room
• The map of the world as seen in the opening title sequence of The Last Airbender
• Zuko’s Blue Spirit mask from when he went undercover as a vigilante
• Nisha picks up an object with the three swirls indicating the Air Nation
• There’s a musical instrument on the wall that, shapewise, looks closest to Chong’s instrument — the dramyin — from The Last Airbender Season 2’s “The Cave of Two Lovers”
• Any radios are going to be from the Legend of Korra era, since the tech hadn’t been developed in the time of The Last Airbender. It’s possible one of these might be Bumi’s portable radio, or based on it in some way
• As Pavi accidentally turns on the radio and becomes terrified, we see a red umbrella, which is likely the same one Aang got as a present in The Last Airbender Season 1, Episode 14, “The Fortuneteller”

The “lantern” Pavi excitedly calls out definitely seems to be something, so feel free to make fun of us for not figuring out what it is; same for the purple robe with long sleeves in the back, which looks like something Princess Yue would wear but is not. Probably. Regardless, there’s a lot there to freeze frame and comb through, and it makes sense that they wouldn’t have many relics from Korra’s era since they, you know, hate Korra.